Misleading Beer Style Names

Out of hand or maybe just having the lines blurred? For me, blurring the lines makes it much more fun and opens up many interesting possibilities.

 

Well, the India Pale Ale thing... you need to educate yourself on the history of the style.
Otherwise, it's basically marketing and creative license.
All that matters is if the beer is good.

 

"American Black Ale"

 

"Cascadian Dark Ale"

 

In many cases a beer's name is a fuction of the personality of the brewer. As for the name of a style I am right there with you, too many freaking styles.

Here is my list of styles- Pale Ales, Porters, Strong Ales, Wild Beers, Sour Beers, Light Lager Beers, Dark Lager Beers, Fruit/ Vegetable Beers, Smoked Beers. Somewhat fewer than 103, but every beer we drink can fit in there.

 

Interesting idea. So where would you put the Oktoberfest beers? And would you really want to lump Adjunct lagers (e.g., Bud, Coors, etc.), German style Pilsners (e.g., Prima Pils or Jever) and Czech style Pilsners (e.g., Urquell) into the category of "light lager beers?"

 

Yes, I would, with proviso that the adjunts used were listed.

And I admit that I was being slightly facetious.

The fact remains, though, that even with 103 styles we often are unsure of what we are buying, or unable to properly categorize a beer. It could be said that 103 is far too few to properly allow us to know what is in a bottle we buy. My point, partly facetious though it may be, is we only would be slightly less able to identify a beer's characteristics before purchase with 9 recognized styles and not the 103 we presently recognize.

 

:-) Thought so....

The fundamental problem is that no categorization scheme will satisfy what you want. The world of beer is filled with many ways in which one can vary from another and many of the boundaries are fuzzy and have few natural divisions. This is what attracts us to beer in the first place, the almost limitless variety. Throw in the fact that some style names have a basis in legal/social/political history rather than brewing and we are guaranteed a "bloomin buzzin confusion." Even if we listed each and every ingredient and where it was grown, etc. there would still be no way to predict the beer's full range of characteristics before purchase. So we might as well just have two categories, beer and not-beer.

 

Another problem is to confuse names with styles. For example pale ale, IPA and bitter has been used to describe exactly the same brews! In the field of dark beers the same ones have been routinely named either stout or porter from time to time.And an 1850 IPA was different from an IPA brewed in 1900, 1950, 2000 and today.Things evolve and it's a pointless exercise to try to pin them down.ESB never was a style, just a straightforward name used by Fuller's.
I began my drinking career with bitters.The ones I'm drinking these days are often quite different though many have stayed the same.As always, the brewing scene is dynamic.New varieties become available and often the wheel turns full circle and forgotten styles reappear.
To the OP the dichotomy regarding "Black Pale" has been around from the 1880s when Bass introduced a beer like an IPA (Bass marketed its IPA as simply Pale Ale) but dark.

 

This is nothing new, we really ought to stop using this as an indictment on modern beer culture.

Maybe we should consider being less persnickety as well and look beyond the name and focus on intention. Pale Ale has always been somewhat of a ubiquitous style, when you say Pale Ale people have an understanding of what you are talking about. People also understand what the color black is. Instead of inventing new terms, like CDA, IBA or ADA, you use a commonly understood terms which more accurately describe the beer than these attempts at political correctness. A beer that taste like a Pale Ale, or IPA, that happens to be black is certainly appropriately described as a Black Pale Ale.

 

Hah..

ahaha...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

 

And then we have Infinium!?!?! WTF

 

leave it up to you Kevin to bust out an awesome quote.

 

Where does mild fit?

 

I think he is missing a few, so add in amber lager for example.

But I have no problem with the latter. It makes the "quality" of BMC really clear. And also solves the problem people have with "rating to style". I think when rating its perfectly reasonable to compare Bud Light to Prima Pils.